Unreal Engine 3 Gets Multithreaded Support; Devs Have No More PS3 Excuses

Epic Games recently announced that Intel Threading Building toolsets have become part of Epics integrated partners program for Unreal Engine 3 licensees. In other words, developers will no longer need to seek third-party resources when using the UE3 to gain access to multithreaded building tools. This should be especially helpful for designing games for the PS3.

According to Dr. Michael Capps, president of Epic Games…

“Bringing Intel into the Integrated Partners Program and integrating Intel TBB into Unreal Engine 3 ensures our licensees are within reach of the best development tools available,”… “This partnership will help minimize the work required to author multithreaded applications for Unreal-powered games and, in the long term, provide developers with greater access to Intel Tools.”

For those of you who keep track of complaints, excuses and drawbacks within the development community regarding the PlayStation 3, multithreaded support has been one of the main hurdles for developers. This should be good news for the lot of designers eyeing Unreal Engine 3 tech for hardware heavy games planned for release within the next few years.

James Reinders, marketing director and chief evangelist, Developer Products Division, Intel Corporation commented in the press release, saying…

“Intel is committed to providing the very best tools for parallel programming like Intel® TBB and our new Parallel Studio suite,” ... “By integrating Intel TBB in the Unreal Engine and sharing it with their licensees at no additional cost, Epic is facilitating parallelism to spur greater multi-core innovation among game developers.”

Yeah so it looks like devs will no longer be able to hide behind the excuse of delayed development due to lacking multithreaded support for the multi-core PS3. This should also cut down on costs tremendously for studios who at one time had to hire in a separate team to handle the multithreading.

If you need more info about the Unreal Engine 3 or the integrated partners program, feel free to drop a hit to the Official Epic Games Website. For more gaming news, info, updates and insight, be sure to stay tuned in with Blend Games.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.